


Water in an Oasis

by melancholicInspiration



Category: Borderlands (videogame), Tales From The Borderlands (videogame)
Genre: M/M, i headcanon Vaughn's last name as being Mackenzie or smth, welp
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-26
Updated: 2015-02-26
Packaged: 2018-03-15 06:35:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 735
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3437141
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/melancholicInspiration/pseuds/melancholicInspiration
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Zed travels to Oasis to help, only to find two people almost dying from dehydration.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Water in an Oasis

**Author's Note:**

> Commission work for dreading-everything on tumblr.

Like most towns in the Dust, and in Pandora, the desert towns had no shade and the populations often succumbed to bouts of dehydration. Between the Hyperion presence and people practically getting heatstroke and going mad, it was a miserable existence  for people living in places like Oasis.

The dust rolled around the hills approaching the town as a Runner approached it - the only runner that had been close to this place in god knows how long. A rugged looking doctor stepped out onto the sand, a hat protecting him from the sun as he got a couple coolers from the seat beside him before walking up into the town.

He managed to get a few feet into the town, seeing most of the buildings boarded up and residents either departed or dead, when an odd person bounced up in front of him. He wore a straw hat and was obviously suffering from severe dehydration.

"Hey doc, hey doc, hey doc, whatcha got there?" Shade cracked a gruesome, cracked-lipped grin as he bounced around Zed with glee. It had been  _soooo_ long since he saw a real alive person.

Zed growled under his breath, and opened one of the coolers, getting an ice cold bottle of water and shoving it at him. "Drink this, find someplace shady,  _and shut th' hell up._ " Shade just grabbed the bottle and started following Zed around the town as he looked for anyone left alive out here. Or even a cool building to set up shop for a while, nurse someone back to health.

 

Zed was about to snap at the man following him, tell him to get his damn hands out of his pockets and put his cigarettes  _back where they belonged_ when he turned round a corner and saw a person lying face first in the sand, hiding under the shade of a building. He ran over to the kid, he was far too small to be an adult, and turned him over. First he checked his heart and almost sighed with relief. The kid was still breathing and his heart was fine.

"Kid? Kid can ya hear me?" Zed called down to him and jolsted his shoulders a bit. If he just fainted, even on Pandora, that was a good sign. The boy's eyes didn't open from behind the rectangular glasses but he let out a faint groan. The poor kid probably had a minor case of heatstroke. Easily fixable but he needed to get him in somewhere ventilated and out of the sun.

Not wasting any time, he picked the kid up in a bridal style fashion, and looked for a place that he could help this kid. It didn't take long but he found an old store near the back of town that had a very cool backroom. Zed placed the kid on a table and was going to go back for his coolers and jumped when he saw that man behind him carrying both of them.

"Thanks?" Zed wasn't sure what to say to the guy and Shade just gave him a wide toothy grin at him. Which was fairly unsettling. He took the coolers from him and went back to the boy on the table. The easiest way to get his core temperature down, and thus wake him up if nothing else, was probably to get him into a shower or something.

Given that there was no running water for miles, Zed used the next best thing. He grabbed some icepacks, undid his shirt slightly and put one on his stomach. Two smaller ones went by the soles of his feet, and two by each of his hands. It was a ridiculous idea, and Zed was full of ridiculous ideas. But when you lived on a planet where practically everything wanted to kill you, you learned to deal with it in kind.

After a few moments, the kid jolted up looking panicked and staring around as if he was expecting for something to attack him. While that reaction was perfectly normal amongst residents of Pandora, especially the uninhabited parts, Zed almost felt for the kid. He was alone and passed out in the middle of nowhere, by all means he should've been skag food.

"What's yer name kid?"

"Vaughn." The kid replied, looking at him with a flushed tint to his freckled cheeks. It was cute.

"The hell you doing out here?"


End file.
